Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

When a young woman spends the night with an alleged terrorist, her quiet, ordered life falls into ruins. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum portrays an anxious era in West Germany amid a crumbling postwar political consensus. Katharina, though apparently innocent, suddenly becomes a suspect, falling prey to a vicious smear campaign by the police and a ruthless tabloid journalist that tests the limits of her dignity and her sanity. Crafting one of the most accessible and direct works of 1970s political filmmaking, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta deliver a powerful adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s novel, a stinging commentary on state power, individual freedom, and media manipulation that is as relevant today as when it was released.

Share

Film Info

  • Germany
  • 1975
  • 106 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • German
  • Spine #177

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by codirector Volker Schlöndorff and producer Eberhard Junkersdorf, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interview from 2002 with codirectors Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta
  • Interview from 2002 with director of photography Jost Vacano
  • Excerpts from a 1977 documentary on author Heinrich Böll
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin

New cover by Joan Wong

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by codirector Volker Schlöndorff and producer Eberhard Junkersdorf, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interview from 2002 with codirectors Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta
  • Interview from 2002 with director of photography Jost Vacano
  • Excerpts from a 1977 documentary on author Heinrich Böll
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin

New cover by Joan Wong

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
Cast
Angela Winkler
Katharina Blum
Mario Adorf
Inspector Beizmenne
Dieter Laser
Werner Tötges
Jürgen Prochnow
Ludwig Götten
Heinz Bennent
Dr. Blorna
Hannelore Hoger
Trude Blorna
Rolf Becker
Prosecutor Hach
Karl Heinz Vosgerau
Alois Sträubleder
Credits
Director
Volker Schlöndorff
Director
Margarethe von Trotta
Screenplay
Volker Schlöndorff
Screenplay
Margarethe von Trotta
From the novel by
Heinrich Böll
Music
Hans Werner Henze
Cinematography
Jost Vacano
Editing
Peter Przygodda
Production design
Ute Burgmann
Production design
Günther Naumann
Costumes
Annette Schaad
Costumes
Reinhild Paul
Produced by
Willi Benninger
Produced by
Eberhard Junkersdorf
Produced by
Gunther Witte

Related Films

1/13

A scene from The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

2/13
3/13
4/13
5/13
6/13
7/13
8/13
9/13
10/13
11/13
12/13
13/13

Current

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: The Past Is Present
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: The Past Is Present

Once dismissed as overly topical, this New German Cinema masterpiece is now regarded as an enduringly relevant indictment of surveillance capitalism and patriarchal oppression.

By Amy Taubin

Essays — Aug 3, 2020

Explore

Volker Schlöndorff

Writer, Director

Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff

Though he would find himself at the forefront of his native nation’s radical New German Cinema movement, Volker Schlöndorff got his training in France. Apprenticed to such trailblazers as Alain Resnais (Schlöndorff served as second assistant director on Last Year at Marienbad), Jean-Pierre Melville (assistant director on Leon Morin, Priest and Le doulos), Louis Malle (assistant director on The Fire Within), he became fascinated by the possibilities of filmmaking as a political tool early in his career. His 1966 debut, Young Törless, based on Robert Musil’s acclaimed novel, was not only the first of his many literary adaptations, it was also something of a New German Cinema call to arms, a political allegory about Germany’s social history set in a boys’ boarding school at the turn of twentieth century. More stinging commentaries on the state of Germany-then-and-now followed in the seventies: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (codirected with Margarethe von Trotta, Schlöndorff’s wife at the time), Coup de grâce, and his grandest success, the Oscar- and Palme d’or–winning The Tin Drum, a brilliant adaptation of Günter Grass’s metaphorical novel about the horrors of World War II. Schlöndorff has gone on to teach film and literature and continues to make films in Germany and elsewhere.

More Volker Schlöndorff